Five Simple Words

Dear Ms. Powers,

You are a true storyteller.

Five simple words. These were five simple words that you wrote, perhaps in passing, on the top of an assignment that you handed back to me over nineteen years ago. You have written so many like them since we last saw each other. You probably don’t even remember writing them. But all these years later, I remember reading them. I will never forget them.

I don’t have that assignment anymore, but those words have burned themselves into my mind. They were the first time that someone outside of my family confirmed something that I had not dared to think of as possible until that point: that I could be a writer.

Yes, I read and wrote before that point. That was how I interacted with the world; it was how I processed what I saw and the worlds that my mind created. Yet it was not until the seventh grade, when you assigned us the family folktale assignment, that I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could make something more of this little hobby of mine. It was not until I told you the tale of my mishap on Knott’s Berry Farm’s infamous Ghost Rider and you provided that one line of feedback to me that I allowed myself to think that I could be like all those writers whom I admired so deeply.

No, you were not the only one to encourage my writing. There have been others to leave their mark, to give me nudges when I have been down, but you were the first outside of my family to leave such a deep mark. It was after these five simple words that I picked up my writing ambitions with abandon. I delved even deeper into the worlds that called out to me. Page after page have become filled with stories, poems, and information about these worlds. Starting in high school, I took every writing course and workshop that I could get myself into. I majored in English in college; I even got a master’s in creative writing. All the while, your words played in the back of my mind:

You are a true storyteller.

No, I have not become a world-famous writer. The best that I can claim are some stories in some third-rate anthologies, an essay in an old college anthology, and stories on a website called Vocal. I even have a day job that has nothing to do with writing. Yet I have not given up on writing. I have come close, I’ll admit; it’s a hard pursuit sometimes. Then I think of your words. Your words do not mean that I meant to become famous or even a published writer. They only mean that I am meant to tell stories, and that is what I am doing. Thanks, in large part, to you, I am still telling stories—and maybe, just maybe, I am making influencing someone else through my words, just as you influenced me through your words.

It has been nineteen years since we last saw each other. I don’t know if we would even recognize each other if we saw each other on the street. You should know, though, that I would not be the person that I am if it had not been for those five simple words that you wrote on my assignment. For better or for worse, I would not have pursued writing as fervently as I have. Perhaps I’d be something more “productive” or perhaps I’d be more lost in life, but I would certainly not be me. And most certainly I would not have touched the lives that I have touched along the way.

Thank you for your contribution to my life.

Sincerely Yours,

Stephanie